COLORADO PRISONS BURSTING AT SEAMS

Inmate Population Threatens State Funds For Education, Health, Other
Pressing Needs

Criminals are coming into the Colorado prison system so fast that the state
will need the equivalent of another 2,500-bed megaprison every two years to
hold them all.

That would cost taxpayers about $170 million every other year. That's the
equivalent of each man, woman and child in the state paying $21.50 a year.

The inmate population boom is raising prison costs so rapidly that they
threaten to strip money from other needs such as education, transportation
and health care, state lawmakers warn.

The $645 million worth of new Colorado prisons built this decade were filled
as quickly as they were finished, and the annual operating cost of the state
prison system is expected to surpass a half-billion dollars per year by
2002.

This year's $432 million prison operating budget is double the figure of
just six years ago and nearly 10 times the $44.9 million spent in 1984. It
has become the fifth-largest consumer of state revenue, behind
transportation, lower and higher education and human services.

"It's extremely frustrating. It's like you can never quite get your arms
around it," said Sen. Elsie Lacy, chairwoman of the legislature's Joint
Budget Committee.

Overall state spending can increase only 6 percent annually under the TABOR
Amendment, but prison growth is taking far more than its share, forcing
legislators to move funds from other state operations.

"As corrections keeps taking more than its 6 percent, everything else has to
go below that to make our budget meet," said Rep. Jennifer Veiga, D-Denver,
a member of the Capital Development Committee.

To find money for prisons, schools become the most vulnerable targets, with
$2.3 billion this year for kindergarten through 12th grade and $1.4 billion
for higher education.

"What gets hurt is education, because it's one of the more flexible parts of
our budget," Veiga said. "Other things like human services and Medicaid are
fixed amounts that we don't have any control over."

Four factors are fueling the rapid growth in prison population, state
corrections officials say:

Longer prison sentences have been added to the state's criminal code over
the past 13 years, keeping offenders behind bars longer. The average inmate
is now serving 52 months, compared with 37 months in 1990.

The state parole board under Gov. Bill Owens has slowed the granting of
paroles, keeping more parole eligible inmates in prison. In the seven months
since three Owens appointees joined it, the eight-member board has averaged
33 fewer paroles per month -- 328 vs. 361 - than in the previous board's
last six months.

More parolees are being sent back to prison for violating terms of their
releases. Of the 6,192 people sent to prison in 1998, more than 20 percent,
or 1,269, were for parole violations, compared with 766 just two years
earlier.

The state's population growth is bringing with it a proportional increase in
the criminal population. Since January 1999, these four factors have
combined to add an average of 114 new inmates per month to a prison
population that exceeds 15,300. That's an annual increase of 1,368 inmates,
or 9 percent per year.

State projections indicate the population will increase by another 7,000, or
nearly 50 percent, in the next five years, requiring additional new prisons
and staff.

"What's really driving the continuing population increase is that they're
staying longer and a significant percentage of them are coming back to us,"
said Department of Corrections Executive Director John Suthers.

Some state lawmakers, including Veiga, are suggesting plans to slow the
growth by placing some nonviolent offenders in less expensive supervised
parole programs or community corrections facilities.

"I have some feelings that we could enact some sentencing reforms that would
not impact violent offenders," Veiga said.

But she concedes the idea is unpopular among elected officials at a time
when the public continues to call for tougher laws and longer sentences.

And the crackdown on crime is perceived to be working because the crime rate
is declining in Colorado and across the country, Suthers said.

"There are some positive effects of 'get tough' policies on crime," he said.
"You cannot tell me that a lot of crime reductions aren't tied to the fact
that we're locking up serious criminals for a longer period of time."

"Gov. Owens has a 'law and order' record going back to his time in the
legislature, and he's not going to shy away from this responsibility,"
Suthers said.

Suthers and state lawmakers have seen little public resistance to soaring
prison costs.

Longtime legislator Sen. Dottie Wham, R-Denver, agrees.

"People don't see the growth of prisons as being a threat to them. What they
do see is crime, and people are concerned," said Wham, a member of the
Capital Development Committee that funds prison construction.

Whenever Wham sends questionnaires to constituents, she says, their answers
on prisons are always the same: "Do we need to build more prisons? Yes. Will
you support a tax increase to pay for them? No."

But Veiga believes the public doesn't realize the prison system's true
impact.

"Our budget is so complicated that I'm not sure people have a real
understanding of what the prison population is doing to our budget," Veiga
said.

Owens hopes to slow Colorado's state prison construction costs by turning to
private prisons, Suthers said.

Already four private prisons are operating in Colorado, housing about 2,500
of the state's inmates. The state pays $52 per inmate per day, or about $36
million this year, to house inmates at the prisons in Burlington, Las
Animas, Walsenburg and Olney Springs.

Private companies such as Corrections Corporation of America and Corrections
Services Corp. build and staff the prisons or lease prisons built by cities
or counties. That saves the state the cost of building and staffing them.

But the private operations have had difficulties in Colorado.

Last March, guards at Corrections Services Corp.'s Crowley County
Correctional Facility in Olney Springs needed reinforcements from state
guards to quell a riot.

Last July, state officials launched an investigation into the new private
prison in Burlington. About half of the staff of 199 has either quit or been
fired since opening last December. The prison's internal investigator claims
he was fired by the operator, Corrections Corporation of America, for
telling state officials that the facility was dangerously understaffed.

The state also investigated allegations that some female guards had sexual
relations with inmates. One is reportedly pregnant with an inmate's child
and another was accused of bringing contraband into the prison for an
inmate.

State prison officials have housed only low-to medium-security inmates in
the private prisons, keeping the high security risks in state-run
facilities.

Suthers believes the arrangement still gives the state considerable leeway
for more private prisons.

"My guess is that over the next eight years, we may expand our reliance on
private prisons from about 20 percent to 30 percent," Suthers said.

State officials believe that private facilities could never replace the
state system entirely, especially in confining the most dangerous offenders.

Even if 30 percent of the inmates are in private prisons, the state must
create new space for the other 70 percent. At the current growth rate of
more than 1,300 inmates per year, that's more than 900 new state prison beds
annually.

Suthers concedes this reality.

"Our capital budget has slowed down dramatically over the last two years,"
he said. "But the state is growing very quickly, and over the long haul, we
will have to build some more public prisons."